Shutterstock

Imagine being a wedding photographer. You’d probably see a lot of crazy things at all the weddings! From inappropriate speeches and drunk guests, to nightmare in-laws and a couple who is just trying to celebrate with their friends, it’s certainly ripe for a lot of drama.

In this story, a wedding photographer shares a story about a nightmare wedding that really wasn’t worth the effort at all. While the couple was on their honeymoon, the bride realized she needed to call off the marriage and get a divorce.

Keep reading for the whole crazy saga.

The Two Week Marriage from Hell

I’ve been a wedding photographer for 10 years and I’ve seen some stuff. Horrible mother’s, vindictive bridesmaids, negligent venues… You name it.

This was about 9 years ago, I was still finding my feet as a wedding vendor and got asked to photograph (paid) an old school friend’s wedding at a very beautiful and well known venue in the area.

Meet the bride and groom.

The bride in this story is probably the only nice, if naive, person I dealt with.

The husband to be was a fair bit older, but I’m not there to judge. He was quiet and a bit awkward but seemed nice enough.

The bride had 2 young daughters to a previous relationship who were featuring a lot in the ceremony. It was obvious the bride loved her daughters a lot and wanted them to feel a part of everything.

Meet the mother of the bride.

So the big day rolls around, and I meet the mother of the bride (MOB).

It is immediately apparent that she is a straight up nightmare.

She fusses and carries on about every tiny detail, stressing the bride out the whole morning.

Everything is about her, and nothing is good enough.

OP tried her best to deal with the MOB.

I try placating her and agreeing with every little thing she can think to complain about, because when she got some attention and sympathy from anyone, she’d go off for a little while to find something else she could stress about, but at least it kept her out of the bride’s way.

The girls are obviously used to getting bossed around by grandma too as they generally try to stay silently out of her way.

Any encounter with Grandma involved lectures about keeping their dresses clean (these kids are about 7 and 11, they know how to stay out of dirt piles) and a million questions about if they’ve eaten, did they spill anything, why are they touching their hair/flowers/anything else in the house at all.

Here’s how the ceremony went.

Finally the time comes for the ceremony, and the celebrant is the kind I’ve grown to hate over the years. The ones who have no social awareness whatsoever and fail to realise they are not, in any way, a comedian.

Every cringeworthy attempt at humour falls flat, including the hilarious joke about the age difference between the couple which drops like a lead balloon.

I seem to recall there was another major cringe moment in the ceremony itself but the age one has drowned it out after so many years.

This sounds annoying.

Oh no wait… That’s right. The Aunty. The aunty with the camera.

You know the one, who stands in the isle with her (back then) noisy point-and-shoot making my job feel like I’m playing dodgems just to get photos without her obnoxious pink suit jacket and camera playback screen in it.

The icing on the cake with her was that during the official document signing she gets up, stands behind the signing table where the couple are sitting, and takes 100 photos of the back of their heads from a metre behind.

There’s not one single photo I could get of the signing without her in it. She was getting those back of head shots as if her life depended on it.

This sounds like herding cats.

Then, despite the guests being told we were getting family and group photos straight after the ceremony, half of them take off for a smoke.

The kicker is, this venue is a large garden and golf buggies ferry the guests back and forth from the ceremony location to the reception location which is about a 10 minute walk.

The smoking area is of course, next to the reception location… So rounding everyone up was torture.

We decide eventually to bail and just get those photos later at the reception.

Horses were more important than MOB’s wishes.

MOB is NOT happy about this and freaks out that the family photos are the most important part of the day.

I take the couple off in their horse-drawn buggy anyway because they’re running out of the time they’ve hired the buggy for and we’re about to lose our chance to get photos with the horses (the bride adores horses and I don’t want her to miss out.)

When we arrive at the reception half the guests are standing around grumbling that they’ve had to wait for the couple to arrive to open the bar tab and I brace myself for the inevitable.

Sure enough, there are several aunties in particular who within the hour of the bar opening are getting very loud and disruptive.

Even the bride is getting frustrated.

Meanwhile I am attempting to get the family photos we missed (before everyone gets too drunk… it’s not even dinner time).

It’s a struggle because in every grouping there’s someone pulling drunk faces or just flat out walking off back to the bar after 2 seconds before I can even get everyone looking in my direction.

The bride starts looking defeated and asks me if I’m done with formal photos and can she please take the veil out as it’s been giving her a terrible headache for the last 2 hours.

I help her unpin it and place it nicely on the gift table so she can grab it later if she wants it.

Yikes! The MOB is too much.

We have dinner and some awful, drunk speeches with more jokes at the expense of the bride and “all her past failed relationships” (which I gathered was about 2), the age difference again of course, and why the wedding is all about the MOB, like we hadn’t figured that out already thanks Donna.

Then it’s time for the first dance, and the couple who clearly don’t like dancing dutifully arise and head to the dance floor.

The music starts, they’re swaying awkwardly but sweetly together, when MOB marches abruptly across the middle of the dance floor, snatches the veil up off the gift table and goes straight up to the bride, furious, breaking up the dance to insist she put it back in.

She hadn’t noticed the bride take it off because she was sitting for dinner but apparently the veil had some family significance and MOB carried on like the bride was spitting on her great grandmother’s grave by daring to remove it.

OP had the bride’s back.

I’ll never forget that moment for the rest of my life, just the bride standing there looking mortified and near tears trying to just shove it back onto her sore head to stop the mum berating her in front of all her guests.

The music ended in the meantime and the couple made a hasty retreat to be replaced by very drunk aunties who were grabbing at the waiters butts and being as vulgar as intoxicated 60 years olds can possibly be.

The bride disappeared around this point and I found her hiding out back from her mum to have a break from it all with her 2 daughters so I left her alone and told MOB every time she asked some excuse like bathroom break, saw her at the bar a minute ago, isn’t she on the dance floor? Until it was time to do the leaving circle.

Yikes! The guests really messed up.

The husband was pretty far gone by this stage so he wobbled up to say bye to the guests while the bride was approached by the venue staff.

Her face changed immediately so I stopped shooting to find out what was wrong and the bride says through gritted teeth that apparently some guests (we find out later the drunk aunties) had stolen some of the decor and pot plants from veranda at the venue.

The bride promises the venue that all damages will be paid for, says goodbye avoiding her mother as much as humanly possible and gets the hell out of there.

OP wanted to make sure the bride was okay.

I check in with the bride just before they head off on their honeymoon for a few days to see if she’s ok.

Her daughters are staying with some close friends and she’s looking forward to putting all the drama behind her.

The next part breaks my heart. It makes me sad even as I think about writing it down.

I heard about it from mutual friends and then also in lesser detail from the bride herself a while later.

Oh no!

The bride comes back early as there’s been some concerning reports about her girls.

The school counselor, the friends looking after them and the child protection services advise the bride that while they’ve been away, the eldest daughter finally felt safe enough away from the now step-dad to report he’s been touching her for over a year.

The bride is devastated but doesn’t understand why she didn’t say anything before the wedding.

The daughter apparently told her that planning the wedding was making you so happy, I didn’t want to ruin it for you. But then on the day you seemed to not have a very good time anyway.

Here’s how it ended.

The bride filed charges and for divorce 2 weeks after the wedding.

The now ex was convicted regarding this abuse case and apparently during the investigation, they charged him with several other instances with different girls that had come to light as well.

I’ve only had a few other weddings that came close to being as disastrous and in the end horrifying as this one.

I wish her daughter had spoken up sooner. Then they could’ve skipped the whole disaster of a wedding. Just when we thought the MOB was bad, the groom was the real monster.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

This person is glad the daughter finally spoke up.

One person suggests a new job that would be helpful at weddings.

This person went from laughing to feeling terrible while reading this story.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a group trip that sours when additional guests are added without agreement.

Another person hopes the mom and daughters are doing better now.

This is truly a heartbreaking story. The wedding was bad enough, but to escape on your honeymoon and find out that you married a monster. Wow. That’s just unthinkable.

I’m glad the little girl finally spoke up. I wish she’d said something much, much sooner.